Fracking pitting greens vs. greens?

New York’s appointment of a fracking advisory panel heavy with environmentalists is drawing criticism from a surprising source: other environmentalists.

Green representatives make up a majority of the 13-member panel, named July 1 to help set up regulatory safeguards for hydraulic fracturing. Most prominent among them are Waterkeeper Alliance President Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former White House environmental chief Kathleen McGinty.

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Kennedy and other panel members said the only way to ensure that environmental concerns are heard is to offer their own voices to the fray.

“I felt that it would be counterproductive and chicken-hearted for the Waterkeeper Alliance to sit on the sidelines and allow an industry-dominated panel [to] attempt to influence the development of a less-than-fully-protective regulatory framework, and then lob bombs at the final work product,” Kennedy said in a statement.

Still, anti-fracking activists in New York are livid at moves by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration to allow the gas-extraction practice, which has largely been the subject of a de facto statewide moratorium. And some say the panel’s environmentalists are abandoning their main mission by participating.

“The environmental groups that are involved are too interested in regulating rather than serving their general purpose, which is to defend our resources, defend the people and to not push these sorts of things through,” said David Braun, co-founder of United for Action, a New York-based anti-fracking group.

Claire Sandberg, executive director of the group Frack Action, said the panel’s membership is irrelevant.

“Regardless of the composition of the panel and the voices on it, we don’t feel a panel looking at implementing regulations will come to any conclusions that will protect the public,” she said. “We believe there needs to be a statewide ban. We believe the practice is too unsafe, and we don’t believe we should be subject to this industry.”

“No matter who you put on the panel, what the panel is charged to do is incorrect,” said Mitch Jones, senior legislative and policy analyst for the group Food & Water Watch, which also supports an all-out ban. “They’re not going to say, ‘Instead of regulation A, B and C, we’re going to ban [fracking].’”

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has estimated that its proposal would allow fracking in about 85 percent of the Marcellus Shale in the state, although it would be prohibited in the watersheds of New York City and Syracuse. Drilling would also be banned around key aquifers — but not within the Delaware River basin, opponents complain.

Shortly after the announcement of the panel, 49 activist groups issued a statement calling for a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing.

Josh Fox, director of the Oscar-nominated anti-fracking documentary “Gasland,” said it “remains to be seen if the ‘Big Greens’ on the panel are going to be responsive to the will of the people on the ground who want a statewide ban or if will they just rubber-stamp and give Cuomo political cover to drill most of the state.”

But panel member Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council, said he doesn’t think his group and its green critics are that far apart.

“The environmental community shares a common vision for what we want for New York,” Goldstein said. He added: “In this instance, we think we can help advance that vision. At least, we’re willing to try to see if we can advance that vision by being on this committee.”